September 2015

Effective September 24, 2015, you may pay for your N-400, Application for Naturalization, using a credit card. The N­400 is the only form that can be paid for by credit card using the G­1450, Authorization for Credit Card Transaction.

USCIS announced that final adjudication of employment-based I-485s is suspended for the remainder of FY2015 due to the statutory cap being reached for the employment-based preference categories. USCIS will accept current I-485s and resume final adjudication when visa numbers are available.

According to the very latest information (end of August 2015) obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice, there is a backlog of 456,644 cases pending before the judges in the nation’s Immigration Courts. This means the court backlog has increased by more than 100,000 cases from the 344,230 that were pending at the beginning of FY 2014.

The average wait time for an individual in the Immigration Court’s pending cases list has also reached an all-time high of 635 calendar days. But this average wait time only measures how long these individuals have already been waiting, not how much longer they will have to wait before their cases are resolved.

For detailed information on the hearings scheduled and wait times by hearing location, please visit TRACImmigration.

Big news last week from the USCIS and DOS. Applicants with approved I-130s and I-140 immigrant visa petitions can now file for immigrant visas through the Department of State or adjustment of status through USCIS beforetheir priority dates are current. The actual visa/green card/adjustment cannot be approved until the priority date is current, but filing ahead of time may allow for the visa/green card to be approved as soon as is available.

Until now, the immigrant visa/adjustment application could not be submitted until the priority date was current, which resulted in lengthy waits for approval during a period when the individual technically was eligible to already have the visa/green card in hand.